Pretend
by Cadence
Summary: Live Through cliff-fic: A moment out of time. Meryl thinks and Vash speaks in the wrong tense.


jeez, what's with all the angst

**Pretend**

"Let's pretend something."

Our words, truer than our names.What I know you by before your touch, fingers sliding up my side.More you than me, but that's what this is – this relationship or act or moment or whatever you call the burned image that keeps dissolving reality.Your deep, drowning eyes own me.

Because it could never be any other way.

Your mouth finds mine, opening willingly above yours.Your tongue delicately explores, tasting, brushing over my own tongue before retreating – inviting me to do the same.Gentle, unreal since I know I'm not breathing.Your hands are steady on my hips, holding me on top of you, fingers slowly working my blouse from my skirt.I think my hands are framing your face, brushing so lightly at shadeless hair in the dark.

My knees - bare since I must have lost my tights at some point – are grooved with gravel, maybe bleeding grain-fine droplets.Skirt pushed up and bunched at my waist, revealing thighs that straddle, pressing down for a gasp against my mouth.

We break apart slowly, never losing that drugged closeness.Your touch loosens my blouse.Eyes something edged and desperate.

The night air is coolly indifferent on newly exposed skin.Cliff creaks unhappily beneath us.

I think we skipped a step. 

You sit up slightly, mouth covering mine as your palm warms my breast, fingers carefully stroking.The shift of clothing is loud over faintly heavy breathing.My hand presses against your chest, bandages. 

We're pretending something desperate.

I push you away, catching breath and hiding from those eyes I want to live in.

"You're hurt."Brittle, frightened words in the air.

You give me a watery searching look that I can feel and that chokes emotion in my throat, "I'm getting better."

"That's not what I meant."

You already know that.Knew that when the silence took your song and your words and left us staring.Knew that you could make me believe you didn't need the echoes and that maybe this would be enough for me and that maybe it would be enough for you.I wish it were.

I want so badly to give this to you.

But you don't kiss me again, because it isn't.I lie down against you like something lost.The bandages are soft on my cheek – I didn't expect that.

Your words are quiet into my hair, almost lost in the dark strands, "It's her favorite."

I don't know why I suddenly on your frequency – maybe its just a part of this sad little fantasy – but I know what you're talking about.The song our definition almost forgot.And it's important, more than that fictitious moment that was a breath ago and never happened.When we were something and you looked to now.

You're fixated on the past.It's something I never knew before tonight.I've been blind.

"She says she hears it when she's happy.I hear it when I'm close to killing, to making her sad.I don't like irony."

I shiver and your arms tighten around me.This is what you need, not me.I bite my lip, closing my eyes to listen like a child to a fairytale.The image makes me a little sick.

"I didn't hear it . . ."Dead words.You don't want to say that, words that hurt because they can't be dark images or little sounds of blood seeping and crying.They're so much less that they don't even exist to you.Like a lot of things.

Like me.

"We're not different."I don't like hearing you so cold, so numb.But my hands can't warm your voice."When we were crashing, I only wanted her.They could all die, everyone, all the ships.I just wanted her."

You shudder.The outside warmth is only skin-deep.Inside, you're freezing to death.

"But it was okay.I could see her in them – everyone –so she wasn't dead and I wasn't like him and I _saw_ her.

"I can't see her anymore."Tears sting my eyes.And I blink them away because they'd make you cold.

So maybe that's what I'm pretending.That I can hurt you or help you or make you not broken.That there's hope?

That your innocence isn't as dangerous as your gun.That you'll believe again and that your brother isn't plotting something melodramatic and vicious.

That things will be alright.

You're quiet again, drawing me up for another kiss.This déjà vu is unsettling.

Against your lips, "You're hurt."

Something flickers in your eyes, maybe her song.Your breath is something sweet, "I'm getting better." 

Let's pretend.

---------------

note: Sorry about the disjointedness. This is the melding of two ideas, one that I've had for a while, so it's probably pretty strange. Plus, it was written very late at night (er, early in the morning), but I really shouldn't use that as an excuse. But it's an explanation of the Rem/Meryl comparison that I rather like (I actually think this is the one I believe now) with a healthy dose of Meryl-angst _and_ Vash-angst. How can you not love that? Easily. I know. Ah, well.

Trigun is copyright (c) Yasuhiro Nightow and Young King Ours. 


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